


He Who Fell From the World

by Chopsticks



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: 15 years post-game, Explicit Sexual Content, Getting Back Together, M/M, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), some Vaan/OMC
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:21:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24425710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chopsticks/pseuds/Chopsticks
Summary: Ten years was, evidently, just long enough for Vaan to come to terms with never again seeing Balthier and for such complacency to spring the bastard’s return.
Relationships: Balthier/Vaan (Ivalice Alliance)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For MV.

Ten years was, evidently, just long enough for Vaan to come to terms with never again seeing Balthier and for such complacency to spring the bastard’s return.

The _Esterwind_ was mid refuel when the hangar door slid open. Vaan would have looked had he not been expecting a delivery at that exact time. His eyes were on the rising gauge, fingers slotted around the cog-studded lock of the fuel line to tighten it. His back was still to the door when he called out over the pour.

“Hey, you’re the best! Did you actually get there early enough for the pickled mangos?”

The footfalls that answered were too harsh and too loud. Each brisk _clack_ announced itself in echoes around the hangar. (Metal-tipped shoes? No child wore _those_ in Bhujerba.) 

“What—” Vaan began. He turned. 

The man before him was a stranger. Vaan did not know anyone who wore finery with the haphazard ease of bedclothes. The source of the stranger’s distinct heelstrike: copper-edged suede boots embroidered with suns. A pair of embossed leather trousers stretched around his legs and narrow waist. His linen poet’s shirt, half tucked, appeared nearly ordinary until tiny gems caught light in the stitch circling each cuff. The man’s hair fell damp and shapeless over his eyes and ears, as if hastily towelled after a bath, only its fawn shade stirring faint memory. The visible parts of his face, however, were much more familiar. That sharp jaw, that aristocratic nose, that mouth— 

Vaan’s hand dropped from the fuel lock before the man replied.

“Apparently not, I'm afraid. You ought to further your investment in your restaurant runner if you wish him quicker. That boy was clearly either underpaid or underfed given the hour.”

There stood Balthier. Material and alive. So changed, yet unmistakable as soon as he spoke. He was opening a steel container at a workbench and holding court of its contents, looking for all the world like he was charged to be there, like the act of intercepting Vaan’s lunch and subsequently judging its quality was the sensible conclusion to being missing for a full decade.

Vaan turned back to the fuel gauge, hardly seeing. The world blurred. He felt sick. Hunger vanished. Taking its place was hot, spiking anger. His own heartbeat choked at his throat.

Shaking, his hand fumbled forward and shut the valve. He closed his eyes. He won’t play into this game. He _won’t_.

Balthier was commenting on the fish and lentil curry. Vaan clamped the valve tighter and heard him only in bites: _dubious nutrition_ and _ghastly amount of grease_ and _pedestrian slop,_ punctuated by _really, Vaan?_ A standard fare of derision served with fond sarcasm. Methodical and maddening. Vaan didn’t care to hear a single word. How dare the bastard reappear as though he never left? How dare he assume he could mollify an absence of ten years with quips in equal number. How dare he attempt to script shock from Vaan, as though an astonished _‘Where have you been?’_ would absolve Balthier enough to start him on some long-winded tale tangential from any true apology. Vaan would spare him no clemency just as Balthier had spared Vaan no farewell. 

“No.” Vaan spat the word, cutting it through a remark about the lack of a good _madhu_ to temper the tang of terrible curry. 

“No,” he stated again, louder, as Balthier silenced. Vaan faced him now, not bothering to hide his expression. Trembling hands became fists. “No. I’m not doing this with you. Get out. Get the fuck out of my sight. Get _out—_ ”

Caught off course, Balthier stilled. His expression was schooled blank until aplomb resumed; a smile formed as he straightened and brushed back the fringe from his forehead. Licked with damp, the locks held to mimic some longer semblance of his old style.

"You mustn’t scowl so forcibly, Vaan. You’ll age less like fine wine and more like a puce prune. It’s rather unbecoming.” He snapped the lid closed over the food. His boots clicked as he strode closer. “Now, let’s start again, shall we? I haven’t yet been properly introduced. Your airship, this is, yes?"

Vaan held his scowl in place. Any closer and he would surely hit him. “Stop. I said to _get out_. Do it now or I’ll force you.”

Balthier exaggerated a loud sigh and crossed his arms, flattening the balloon of his sleeves to his chest. “Goodness. Please, perish the temptation. Your hands are filthy and these garments are new. If any, ah, forcing is to be done, let it be in my room at the Chandra after you've washed and—”

The last of Vaan’s restraint fled at once. He lunged and grabbed a fistful of the other man's shirt at the collar. The smear of engine oil on the pristine cloth and Balthier's responding wince were almost satisfying.

"Don't start," Vaan hissed. He pushed, marching Balthier backwards towards the hangar door. "Don't even go there, you asshole. I swear. I won't…" 

They were almost at the exit when Balthier abruptly planted his heels and stanced forward into the press of Vaan's fingers. The scant air between them scented of soapy verbena. A warm breath of it brushed down the slope of Vaan's nose.

"Won't you?" Balthier asked, low and cloying. "Your renewed enthusiasm for spoiling my shirts suggests otherwise."

Vaan froze. He knew this gambit. He knew it well, having played it a lifetime ago. The surge of familiarity galled.

He didn't want to remember _them_. Their beginning, their end. But memory was a traitorous thing. Vaan's fifth year post-war had started unforgettably miserable. Penelo, engaged and pregnant, had retired from her co-pilot’s chair to fully root her heart and home in Rabanastre. _I'll always be here, Vaan,_ she had reassured as she hugged him, the protrusion of her belly a palpable reminder for him to not be selfish. _She'll never be here again,_ he had cried days later in a noisy Balfonheim tavern while Fran and Balthier refilled his cups out of mystified pity. _Here, you will be_ , the viera had stated, matter of fact, as Balthier all but carried him into the _Strahl_ that evening, muttering _must it be this particular ‘here’_ so very close to Vaan’s ear. The dearth of family found Vaan acting third wing to the pair for a fortnight. A game inevitably began. In close quarters with someone he fancied mirrored interest, Vaan’s progressive borrowing of clothes and drawing out _Bal-thier_ on his tongue had culminated in Fran citing ambiguous personal reasons to disembark alone at Ambervale’s aerodrome and Balthier chancing to fuck him in the bunk, the bath stall, and the cockpit for the better part of a day. Some measure of Vaan’s spirit had recovered. They parted. Vaan took to the skies solo, not unhappily, not without assurance of future encounters. After their thirteenth time, when Balthier would still pledge no formal footing, Vaan had acquiesced: _I’ll always be here_.

The fist balling white linen at Balthier’s throat cramped with the force. How much Vaan wished to take back those young, naive words. At twenty-two, _always_ had been intangible. An empty fantasy easier said than love. At thirty-two, _always_ proved far too long already to entertain Balthier collecting under a stupid, withered promise.

He was too warm under Vaan's flexed knuckles. Too close. Forever taller, the older man's mouth was eye level. The upper lip was lightly beaded with sweat. A tongue tip flicked out to wet a peeling wrinkle of ruddy bottom lip. Vaan looked away, up, and met Balthier's gaze point blank.

In barely a whisper, he rasped: “Get. Out.” 

He threw his full weight into shoving Balthier out the sliding automatic doors. The man made no fresh protest as he stumbled through backwards. The door hissed shut between them. Vaan toggled the switch to lock it. 

Heart still vaulting madly, he turned back to the airship perched in the quiet hangar. His eyes caught on the glinting metal pail of curry cooling on the workbench. Curling around its aroma, verbena lingered, a tacit question mark.

 _Fuck_ , he thought to himself. _Fucking fuck fuck fuck—_

In that moment, Vaan knew. His life was again at the whims of one who was afforded altogether too much hold upon it. The trap was sprung. He hadn’t even seen it place.

\---

At sunset, the lapsed rain washed Bhujerba in warm watercolours. Oranges, pinks, and purples plied away the afternoon's greys as the sun sank to a hazy horizon. The sight drew a crowd to the outlook at the Khus Skygrounds. Vendors lined laden carts around the terrace's perimeter. Strutting, overdressed holidaymakers attempted to neatly eat syrupy fried dough on sticks. Children chased each other through puddles, piping shrill Dorstonian. Strolling lovers with joined hands looked to the blushing west, rapt in their private worlds. 

Vaan wound his way through the motley, wondering not for the first time if he was going mad to still not have fled the city that had, from noon, become unbearably overcrowded by the newfound occupancy of one person.

The madness led his feet to the southern edge of the Skygrounds, where the ritzy mainstay of the Chandra rose a dozen stories above the rest of the tourist district. He stopped within steps of its ornate doors and blinked up at the sun-drenched facade. The mirror-finish windows offered nothing to glean of its inhabitants but their capacity to part with far too much gil. 

Out of nowhere, a local _parijanah_ was speaking rapidly and flailing a stack of handbills under his chin, startling Vaan from distraction. _Have you the mettle and moxie to prospect the haunted mines,_ bhadra? _Guided expeditions departing daily from Lhusu Square!_ The man did not take a _no, thank you_ for an answer. The stack persisted, and Vaan suffered a lurid brochure. Before the guide could rattle reasons for why Vaan would want to pay to revisit the wretched mines, Vaan hastened within the Chandra, a caricature of three adventurers aghast before a rising skeleton wadding in his pocket.

It had occurred to Vaan before he left the aerodrome that he kept no outfit aboard the _Esterwind_ fitting for the glamour of Bhujerba’s most upscale hotel. Not that he felt the need to primp for any particular bastard. Instead, the plain work blouse and rust-brown tulip trousers were simple staples. Clean and neat, but without a doubt _not_ to impress. However, standing now under a behemoth of a chandelier and opposite a sharply-dressed front desk clerk eying him with stark distaste, Vaan wondered if he should not have opted for something that could pass as formal only down Miner’s End.

“Balthier No-last-name,” the young woman echoed. Vaan could hear the eye rolling though it seemed to tax all her professionalism to refrain. “Balthier...” she repeated, scanning a register on the counter. Her eyes narrowed a fraction as they flitted to Vaan before falling back to the tidy scrawl of the page. She cleared her throat. Her face arranged into a practiced smile. “You are expected, sir. Eleventh floor, room eleven-zero-four. The lifts are located across the lobby to your right. May you enjoy your visit to the Chandra. _Svagatam_.” Her head bowed.

Vaan managed a stupified _thanks_ before crossing the marble expanse to the magicite-powered lifts. He hadn’t expected his request to suffice. Some things, apparently, hadn’t changed; that Balthier would check in to a five-crystal hotel by the same rote they had once used for sleazy taverns was a rather mortifying consistency.

By the time he was staring at the door plaque reading _1104_ , Vaan was fully convinced of his madness. He knew he ought to leave. He _really_ ought to. But to run now would surely be more absurd... 

He bit the inside of his cheek and sounded three hollow knocks on the door. _Fuck it_.

There was silence. He fought to not fidget as he waited in the empty hallway. _If nobody comes to the door in a minute_ , he thought, feeling more foolish each passing second, _I’ll leave and pretend I never—_

Without warning, a click. Then, a creak. A widening crack in the doorway framed a strip of Balthier’s waxing grin.

“Ah, Vaan. Come in. Do come in! Such impeccable timing. I don’t suppose you’ve ever indulged in the room service of this place? The mere presentation would whet a king’s appetite. Join me.”

“I’m not here for dinner,” Vaan rebutted, brushing past Balthier into the room with firm strides. Past the doorway, the carpet under his shoes was plush and paisley. A cursory look around confirmed that the vast suite was lavish in excess. His jaw unclenched and dropped in spite of himself. _That’s either a small swimming pool or a biggest bathtub in Ivalice right there in the middle of the room—_

Behind him, the door clicked shut again and he glanced over his shoulder. Balthier looked very much the same as he did earlier that day. The same slipshod posh. More of his shirt had come untucked. All but a scant fold flowed loose around his hips.

Balthier locked the door and approached. His smile shifted to something sly. Vaan realized he had been caught looking.

“I’m also _not_ here to sleep with you,” Vaan added, more exasperated than embarrassed, "since you’re obviously wondering.”

Balthier stopped at an arm’s length away and canted his head. “Hm. To think: a Giza rabbit hops with intent into a werewolf’s den and expects no danger from the carnivore's maw. Do you feign virtue or possess a hare's brain?”

“Neither, asshole. I’m just here to talk. I expect you can do the same.”

Balthier looked cross at that. “Right. Of course. _Talk_. Like how I attempted to _talk_ mere hours ago at the aerodrome before being bodily banished. Yet I should now pretend as though this is our first such opportunity.”

Vaan stood his ground without a blink. “Yes. Because we’re going to talk on my terms or not at all. If you choose the latter, I can leave right now.”

“Terms to talk!” A hand swatted the air as if to dispel the notion. Not for the first time that day, the sky pirate looked briefly speechless, as though the years should not have changed their old rapport. “You… Fine. Very well. We shall have it your way, then, since I'm less inclined than others to the strict eviction of unannounced visitors. _However_. My condition: you’ll revise your articles to privilege me with my dinner, which, I’ll remind you, remains neglected and congealing in cold while we stand here negotiating terms.” 

“Fine."

Vaan strode into the suite, teeth grit, determined to not gawp around even as he dropped into a seat at a dining table covered almost entirely with gleaming place settings and covered platters. He flattened his back into the velvet chair and crossed his arms, fingers hooked into the fabric of his sleeves. Across from him, Balthier unfurled a napkin. Several dishes lost their domes, revealing a brace of lobsters, buttery clams, smokey tandoori, stuffed apple gourds. A bottle of white uncorked, splashed into two thin-stemmed glasses. Vaan made no move to touch his share, choosing instead to mull its metamorphosis to rosé as sunset caught within the crystal.

The task of physically coming here completed, Vaan found the next part — _talking_ — far worse, sticking like dried glue to his tongue. The anger that had lit at noon now flickered, faded, flared at random with each sound, each gesture. Already, their words had barbed. More of the same would surely spew before the evening’s end. _What's the point again?_ _Closure? Beginnings?_ Dread built, teetering at an uncertain edge. He wanted to leave. He wanted to stay. To know. Questions clamoured within his head, unsaid _: why did you go, when did you get back, who are you (I hardly know you now)..._

“Where is Fran?” Vaan blurted, breaking the silence. 

Balthier’s fork clattered on his plate. He reached for his wine with a jerky hand. “Oh, for the love of Faram. I’m nowhere near drunk enough...” A noisy swallow, followed by a wet cough. The back of his hand blotted a drip at his chin. "Be a sport and ask me that after dinner, won't you, Vaan? Please."

 _On my terms_ , Vaan wanted to remind, to steer the conversation in his control. But the tightness on Balthier's face spoke something uncomfortable. Vaan's resolve slackened to worry.

"Is she alright?" he continued. He leaned forward in the chair. "Did something happen—"

 _Crack_. A lobster carapace broke apart from its tail. Balthier winced, hissed. He brought his thumb to his mouth; the shell had drawn blood. "Gods!" he gritted. "Have you always been this adverse to taking cues? After, I say. By all means continue, you hear. _Dalmascans_. I'd forgotten the incorrigible tenacity. Fran is— Fran is dead."

Vaan inhaled sharply. "No. What… How can she be... _?"_

"Dead," Balthier repeated. The napkin pressed to his thumb, a spot blooming red on crisp white. "Prolonged mist sickness in foreign jagd. Insidious. We hadn't known the cause — no viera ventured where she had — we hadn't known til she was near passing. Yet she stayed in jagd, with me, to die across the world from her Wood. Four years ago. I killed her."

 _Four years_. "Shit, that’s… I wish I'd known. And you couldn't have. She must have decided—"

"Vaan. Cease that thought at once. If your Penelo _decides_ to die aboard your airship over landing and perchance living, would you easily oblige? Do not be so quick to judge innocence; your utter lack of akademy aptitude shows." Balthier poured more from the bottle, filling his glass close to the brim. "My hands were hardly bound, irrespective of her final wishes. I wanted to fly. I wanted her near. Nay, more than that, I needed her. Never did I say as much, but Fran… she intuited, as always. My error was obliging her obliging me. Her staunch goodness to me does not acquit me as accomplice."

Balthier paused to stiffly grasp his wineglass. "So. Now you know. I pray the confession sates." Eyes downcast, he drank.

The room darkened around them. Beyond the arched windows, Bhujerba's twilight gradient shifted violet-blue. Magicite wall sconces began their pale glow in the departure of sun. 

Vaan felt cold. For four years, Fran had been gone and Ivalice had carried on not knowing. A memory surfaced — the last one in which Fran existed for him. He had come across the pair by chance outside New Nabudis, having spied the unmistakable _Strahl_ on the southern bluff as he flew past. That day, the viera had been quintessential resilience; despite her own hurt, she had mended Balthier's gouged leg in the airship’s shade without strain. Her precise method and tempo had drawn unspoken lines like infirmary curtains. Vaan could only share his potion stock and verbally soothe her cursing patient as she had worked. Later, as Balthier rested in magick-induced sleep, Fran had approached to rescind her partner's offer of a one-third bounty split. _His heart sets not on completing the hunt. He desires your company, not the coin. Stay._ And Vaan had agreed, tarrying long enough for Balthier to heal and stealth aboard the adjacent ship to kiss him awake that night.

It was a bitter realization that he had never said thank you nor goodbye. Fran was gone, and Vaan was too late to expressly appreciate her friendship. He had always thought her timeless, poised to outlive them all. Even after the _Strahl_ disappeared from Ivalice, Vaan had never thought her likely dead as he had often (with spite, with despair) imagined her hume counterpart.

So uncanny it was to know Balthier to be without her. Even with a head start of four years, he appeared less prepared than Vaan to candidly mourn.

His cup drained, Balthier broke armistice with the shellfish. He skewered, smashed, and severed to leave an excessive mess for small morsels. Vaan reached for his own wine without thinking, body seeking distraction more than refreshment. The Rozarrian vintage was aptly bitter.

"That wasn't what I expected to learn tonight," Vaan confessed. "I'm sorry."

Balthier fixed him a wry smile. "Are all Dalmascans wont to grow a knack for inducing guilt by apology in their thirties or had that just been a Basch thing?"

Vaan gave a small shrug, indulging the digression. "He's been Archadian longer than he had been Dalmascan, you know. It's been fifteen years."

"Gods, I'd forgotten. He'll soon surpass my own unfortunate stint in that place. Regardless, my point was..." Balthier put down silverware and fiddled with a corner of his napkin. "Your sorry is undue, and I've become the juxtaposed boor. It hasn't escaped my notice your, ah, lack of enthusiasm about my arrival. I had miscalculated. Perhaps I ought to have prefaced with this, at the aerodrome, but... I apologize. For a great deal, I expect."

Vaan let out a tense breath as though something was pierced and began to deflate within him. The ensuing ache snapped in his chest like wind through the ripped rubber of a balloon. 

"Fucking hell… It's a start. You make terrible entrances. Almost as awful as your exits," he replied, glaring across the table. “ _Ten years_. You didn’t say when you were leaving. You didn’t say where you were going. Not to me, not to anyone. I thought... I thought we had something good for a while, for those few months. And then nothing. I don't think 'lack of enthusiasm' begins to describe it.”

"All things considered, I admire your restraint.”

"Restraint from what? What do you imagine I'm holding back on, huh? Violence? Tears? Or something more stupid?" Vaan shook his head at the idea. "I thought you were dead. I had moved on. You being here now doesn't make you less of a ghost to me. For all I know, you'll be gone again tomorrow."

"Yet you've deigned to entertain my ghost tonight. To what end?"

"If you're going to take up haunting my life again, I want to know why. Not about why you left ten years ago — I don't give a shit about that anymore. I want to know why you would bother to come back if you've been elsewhere for so long. Why, ten years later, you come back to _me_. Tell me the truth straightforward."

A halting silence followed. The fact of Fran's passing was too great a weight; its gravity dampened Vaan's gratification to see Balthier falter, to see him wiping his mouth en lieu of a reply and the nervous twitch of his fingers that could not be accounted for by alcohol — his face was yet too pale. Pity sided with the man who dressed smarting wounds with jewels and gold. (So unlike the viera who could warm esuna in one hand while the other tightened a tourniquet. This time, Balthier was alone.) Pity seeped in, prevailed, rounding the bite of disdain. Too easily could Vaan conjure the idea of losing Penelo, the reality of having lost Reks and his parents. There was no replacement for family. Such loss was immeasurable.

Pity — no, sympathy broke the silence. Vaan’s voice dropped a touch softer. "Ages ago, you and Fran took me in when Penelo stopped flying with me. When I was young and greedy and an emotional wreck instead of just being happy for her. I haven't forgotten that." He didn't miss the hopeful gleam in Balthier's eyes as he spoke. _So starved he must be_. "I know this isn't the same. I don't know what happened or where you've been. But if you had… If you didn't wait years after Fran was gone, if you needed it, I would have let you in as you had done for me. As a favour repaid."

Balthier braced his arms into the table and stood. He made a sound in his throat, a flat note in between humour and pain. He moved to an open liquor cabinet against the wall, palm caged over his lower face as though guarding from his own breath.

“Would you?” he murmured, words muffled. “Would you really?”

“Now you’re fishing. I’m not that generous. I won’t repeat myself.”

Balthier hummed into his hand. After some deliberation, he picked a large decanter half-filled with dark amber. “The truth, as you ask, requires something stronger. Come, then, if you wish to know.” He gestured to the sprawling sitting area by an unlit fireplace. “I’ll speak as we drink. Two fingers, neat? Unless I misremember, or your preference changed.”

Vaan followed with reluctance. The semicircle of cushion-choked couches held little appeal. All of them were too wide to seat only one _._ He remained standing. “I'm fine. No drink.”

“I insist— wait, no. You’ve no fondness for being forced to forfeit your stringent terms. I _implore_. I implore you to join me for a belated drink as part of your prior mentioned support in a time of bereavement. Grant me this favour, would you?”

Balthier approached with twin tumblers holding ample pours, far more than two fingers. He proffered one. A jutting knuckle brushed Vaan’s arm, offhand. Vaan dug his nails into the upholstered back of a couch. 

“Don’t play with me,” he warned.

Heedless, Balthier crowded closer. Vaan snapped his head up and narrowed his eyes. 

“Balthier—” 

“ _Vaan_.” 

The word was a whisper over the skin of his cheek. Something clinked at his chest, glass against metal; the tumbler's lip touched the flat of the pendant resting between his collarbones. Vaan drew a sharp breath. Potent, peppery vapour filled his nose, promising heat.

" _Please_..." Balthier breathed at his ear.

An unexpected, visceral shot of want sent Vaan lurching away from the lure of him. “Stop this,” he lashed, “I can’t...”

Balthier paused. Thin lips pursed. The extended hand wavered and retreated. His pointed gaze searched Vaan — up, down, up — crossing thrice past his frantic heart, coming to rest at his eyes.

Vaan looked away.

“Ah... You’re involved,” Balthier stated, voice toneless. “My apologies for assuming otherwise. Who is the enviable individual, pray tell?”

"I…" Vaan blinked, startled. _Involved?_ His thoughts flicked to Ralik in Rabanastre. _No, not him._ Vaan could call them 'involved' only by scattered convenience. Forever off and on, most recently off, they had last seen each other over three months ago. The other man was as terrestrial as Vaan was aerial. A potter, bound by earth and clay. It did not shame Vaan to admit that Ralik’s easy proximity as Penelo's brother-in-law was a greater draw than most other qualities.

Vaan sat down on a footstool. He closed his eyes, rubbing his brows. "I'm not. But that's also not an invitation." 

"Hmm. I see. Well...!” Balthier was a flurry of footsteps and swishing sleeves. Vaan heard the drop of a liquor glass on a wood surface, the soft creak of a body sinking into nearby furniture. “I'm glad to hear it. Unattached suits best. You'll not guilt me for my proposal, then, and the reason for which I am here: I am in need of a partner. I'm rather set on you, as it happens. Fly with me, Vaan."

The request did not surprise him. What _did_ was the pull in his chest at Balthier's honest cadence. Vaan looked through a split in his fingers. The suite’s locked exit hid on a distant wall. Barring the direct path, Balthier half laid, legs splayed, on a blanket-draped divan, watchful over the rim of his glass.

“What if,” Vaan said slowly, “ _I_ don’t need _you_.”

“And what if you do?” Balthier raised an eyebrow in dispute and reclined further into a tasseled cushion.

Vaan gave a blunt laugh. “Sit up, idiot. You look ridiculous. It’s not working.”

Balthier mimicked offence, hands aloft as he smiled and somewhat straightened. “Two thousand gil a night, and yet my guest mocks me for partaking in the room’s most comfortable chair. If you’ve seen the state of my airship you’d understand the requisite hedonism. But I stand by this: I need a partner, and you’ll need me as well. You must know why most pirates fly in pairs.”

Of course Vaan knew. Without Penelo, he would have died many times over within the first year. Her retirement crippled his entire capacity for risk. “How considerate of you to suddenly think of my safety. I've only been piloting alone for a decade,” he deadpanned. “Weren’t you doing the same for the last few years?”

“I… Yes, but…” Balthier made a frustrated sound in his throat. He frowned. His remaining finger of drink sloshed dangerously as he mimed a line in the air. “I must show you to convince you, I think. Aboard my ship. Much higher than Bhujerba, we ought to climb, for you to see. I must show you.”

“Show me what, exactly?”

“The _world_ , Vaan. A world that you’ve never seen. A world that you would _hunger_ to explore if I could only show—”

“Your airship isn’t even here,” interrupted Vaan, losing patience. “You must have ferried. I saw the ‘drome’s docking records.”

“The _Strahl_ isn’t,” Balthier corrected. “I have more ships than the one.” Vaan shot him an incredulous look, and he added, “Fortune favours the skystone that flies ships over jagd. Foreign cartographers pay handsome sums. Ivalice’s own guild rate for new lands _staggers_. In partnership, you would claim a very prosperous half.”

"I don't care about the gil."

"Not even for the benefit of Rabanastre's impoverished children?"

"How did you… Did you _investigate_ me before coming here?'

Balthier smiled again, wolfish, branching wrinkles bracketing bright eyes. "No. It was a good guess. I know you, Vaan."

The conceit in those words grated like sandpaper on skin. Vaan drew to his feet. He had enough. "No. No, you really don't. You're so fucking full of yourself. I can’t believe you think that after ten years I'd—"

 _Thump_. The tumbler hit the carpet, its contents spattering, soaking the paisley pile, and rolled under the divan. A grip, lightning-quick, caught his wrist as he began to make for the door. "Let _go,_ " Vaan snapped. Pulled. The hand chased, clamped harder, bruising. Balthier was whispering his name in raspy repetition _Vaan-Vaan-Vaan_ and a thudding heartbeat later the solid line of him was at Vaan's side, free arm encircling his lower back, parody of a lovers' dance.

The lips against his hair warmed a spot behind his ear. "I'm sorry."

Vaan grappled while the other man ravelled them even closer. "You..." he started. His voice shook. From what, he couldn't imagine, couldn't think. They were half flush together, imperfectly overlapped like magnets with warring antipodes. Vaan hissed, pained. His right hand numbed past his wrist where the cuff of fingers snared. He pulled again and again and then, in a wild bid, _pushed_. The force unbalanced them, legs tangling, onto the divan. The grip slackened and released him to bolster from the fall. Vaan scrambled up, forearms finding purchase on the torso below, until two firm legs wrapped behind his knees to trap him into the leather of Balthier's thighs. 

In the quiet standstill, their harsh breaths jarred. The dissonance dragged Vaan out of the foggy space of his head to piecemeal awareness. The dim hotel room. The divan’s crossweave throw. The pale abdomen, unclothed in the fray. Vaan blinked, saw Balthier’s face under him. The other man’s mouth was parted. Cheekbones pink. Half-closed eyes glinted in lamplight behind a disheveled fringe. 

Legs flexed carefully around Vaan, coaxing him into their spread. The movement was a jolt of clarity that turned the burn of his madness to ice.

"Is this what you want?" Vaan growled. He pressed a steady palm down the exposed skin to the leather border at Balthier’s waist. Paused. Then continued over the burnished edge and further down, against the criss-crosses lacing the front of tight-fitted trousers and the unmistakable swell beneath them. Balthier gasped, tried to say his name again and choked halfway, the word trailing off to a strangled _ah!_ Hooked legs fell limp from Vaan's hips, parting further. Vaan traced the shape of Balthier's trapped arousal, following its veer, thumbing its blunt tip. "Is this what you want?" he demanded again as he palmed Balthier to fullness. Groaning, the man made no new attempt to answer. Vaan repositioned, closing Balthier’s splayed legs to seat his weight astride them. 

A rough hand planted on the back of Vaan's neck and tugged him down towards an upturned face. Vaan moved quicker. He seized the surging chin and jerked it off course. The diverted mouth crushed wetly to his jaw.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t you fucking kiss me.”

“Why…” Balthier began. Didn’t finish. Vaan’s hands were upon him again, making quick work of tied laces. The silver ends of the cord percussed on leather with each parallel pull — _thwip-thwip_ , _thwip-thwip_ — until two eyelet columns were stripped free and the trousers were left loose at the groin. A straining erection raised into the slack, tenting and parting the fly. It took little extra effort to bare him from his smalls, and then Vaan's hand was wrapped all around him, a callous sheath on smooth foreskin, heat enveloping heat.

So ingrained in him it was to still know, after so long, just how Balthier liked it — how snug to grasp, how brisk to tug, how he favoured wet over dry above all; on instinct, Vaan pooled spit on the back of his tongue while he uncovered the round, reddened head. His lips took aim from above and let a clear, wet line dangle and drip from tongue tip to cock slit. Beneath him, thighs tremored, clenched. Balthier tilted backwards into a cushion as Vaan slicked him up and down. Strokes later, the strand linking them broke to pendulate a single bead, too light to drop. Vaan sucked it back between his teeth.

"Gods, Vaan—!" 

He felt a leg thrash and kick out, boot heel punting aside a footstool behind him. Vaan licked the last of the spit from his lips and watched the other man pant. "You wanted this, didn't you, bastard?" His fingers circled tighter, unrelenting. "Since the hangar. Came all this way to have my hand on your cock again. This what you wanted?" On the next pull, he lingered at the base, thumb and index finger in a ring and questing the rest under cotton and leather to fondle the wrinkled skin of tight bollocks. His other hand resumed rhythm up and down Balthier's erection. "What else, huh? You want my mouth on you, too? You want to fuck me all over your hotel room? Come inside me on your stupidly big bed? Tell me—"

" _Yes_ ," Balthier managed between breaths. "All of it. Yes. I really— _Gods_. Missed this."

Vaan did not stop fucking Balthier's cock between his hands. Not when Balthier attempted to strip Vaan from his trousers — “Hands to yourself” — nor when a bold finger sought the clothed cleft between his buttocks — “I _said_ , hands to yourself, or I...” Vaan squeezed, just enough, in caution. The man trapped under him fell limp to pleasure, neck extended in abandon. A mole on his throat bobbed when he moaned at Vaan swiping over the wet, naked glans. Desperation, Vaan suspected, lowered every threshold. That someone whose ego had loathed compromising control during sex would let Vaan touch him so uncontested was both irksome and exhilarating. He nearly lost himself in that moment to see Balthier cede; almost did he hold too tight, pull too quick. He caught the wince in time to ease, to reign aggression from hurt. There were better ways to make a point.

A little less pressure. A little less hurried. Before long, a rumbling noise of pleasure sounded. “Yes, that’s it,” came the hoarse whisper of someone getting close. “Just like that. Like _that._ ” 

"You want to come?" Vaan’s own voice was just as hoarse. Since when did his mouth get so dry? He swallowed, downing nothing.

Balthier didn’t appear to hear him. His eyes were shut, his brows drawn. Vaan watched him, equally rapt. He needed to find just the right moment. The perfect point before the peak…

 _There_. Balthier's body went telltale taut. His hips bucked into the wrap of Vaan's fist. Thighs pushed up against Vaan's weight. The moan from his gaping mouth went sharp, croaked to silence.

Nearly too late, Vaan let go. Balthier's heavy cock sprang away in the empty space between them, flushed and straining. Bewildered eyes flew open to look down at the loss and then to where Vaan quickly locked both his wrists to the divan. 

" _Vaan_. Ah, I’m so—" Balthier panted, agonized. He bucked once, twice, vainly chasing contact.

For a volatile second, Vaan almost folded on instinct to Balthier’s abject _need_. Involuntary thought baited: it would be an easy thing to sink down, let Balthier finish between his lips, smear upon his tongue, spill down his throat. Vaan's cock twitched; he, too, was hard. He bit his cheek. _No, no. Not a chance_. Vaan dug his knees into the upholstery.

“Unlucky. Just when things were starting to get fun, too,” Vaan remarked, cruelly conversational, paying no mind to the struggle beneath him. “If you’re here for a pilot, the Cloudborne has a hiring board. If you’re here for a fuck, look for the _vesyagriha_ in the alley behind it _._ Plenty of pretty guys there with prettier pricks. I'd fill up on Deo or Asav any day, but you could ask for their Dalmascan if that’s still your thing. I’m sure you can afford one for the week. Or for the whole month. Maybe if you fuck him enough he’ll want to follow you around the world, and you can kill your two birds with one shot.”

Balthier was staring up at him in disbelief, his movements stalled. Already, Vaan could see the flag of his arousal and the spit sheen drying matte. 

Vaan pushed himself off Balthier and stood. He swiped the untouched glass from the side table, vanished its contents in three gulps, thudded it back down empty. Without another look or word, he crossed the room and unlocked the exit. Balthier was shouting. Vaan didn't hear. Distance and a closing door dulled the peal.

Alone, outside the suite, he swayed, brisk steps stuttering, becoming stumbles down the long hallway, furious fumbles down flights of stairs. He had no composure left for lifts. Feet were more fleet. He would be gone from the building before anyone could properly rethread a dozen rows of pantlaces.

Vaan wasted no time returning to the rented hangar. The _Esterwind_ lifted from the skycity by moonrise.

In the lax charge of the Arrivals & Departures desk, his ship's docking record was left amidst the day's other completed forms. A blotted scribble footnoted its bottom margin, the ink readable only by someone desperate enough to decode messy, shorthand Lowtown argot: _'It feels a bit like this.'_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning: brief hint of dubious consent in the third scene.

Home, Vaan had always reasoned, was with family, and family was Penelo, regardless of birth or blood. 

Their family had changed the year they were both twenty-one. A third person happened, collected to them as homogenous as rain upon a river. A brief sojourn from their ship had Penelo meeting Odis on the banks of the Nebra, where she unearthed love of a different sort, in an inspired man who carved vast roads out of Dalmascan desert to link remote villages to the capital. All too soon, she had married, and things hadn't been the same. The small, imagined cube of Vaan’s old home had grown beyond his control, strange new rooms cobbled all around the once simple core with baffling speed, doors leading out panelled in frosted glass, allowing light but alleging privacy.

Vaan kept his corner in the cube but didn’t live in it. He had an airship. He had a sky. The new, expanded space created by Penelo, Odis, and their children didn’t need Vaan, hyphenated only to one of them, to be called a home or a family. But the hyphen never did break. With motherhood, Penelo inherited the combined grit of both their mothers. The bond between them endured, cared for in no small part by Penelo’s steadfast hand. _I’ll always be here, Vaan_ , she would say, sincere, stating fact _. You are always family. Don’t you dare ever forget!_

Vaan had a home, officially, on paper, on a deed signed by the Queen, but he didn’t live in that one either. The middle-aged seeq who dusted it every other Sunday saw it more often than he did. Ashe’s generosity could not account for Vaan’s own regrettable taste: a flat in Rabanastre’s newest, trendiest district. Top floor of a building that scraped the sky. Archadian style, as were many things since the war. Rabanastre's real estate, for one, trended to Tsenoble heights with a barefaced verve made possible only by her self-liberation.

Between them, Penelo had all the good taste. Vaan should have listened when she had suggested for them adjacent homes — not suspended in the air, but on a quiet street on solid ground. _(We could even knock down the stone fence in the middle, if you like. Double the back yard. Wouldn’t that be lovely?)_ But Vaan had been romanced by the idea of a penthouse. _(How many people in this city can say they live in one of those, Pen? A penthouse!)_ And so the novelty of living in his penthouse came and went within a month when the space of three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and an oversized terrace could not be filled out by sparse possessions and solitude.

Penelo never did double her yard, but the plot of earth she did have grew more lush year by year. Vaan could smell the ripe citrus of the orange trees from where he lay, hammocked between two young acacia. Suncups and galbana lilies budded and bloomed in handspun planters. A riot of aloe, yucca, and cacti spiked the landscaped bed along one sandstone wall. At the base of a flowering prickly pear, the children's two pet cactites basked side by side on a pillow of desert grass, photosynthesizing between tiny sleeping breaths.

Vaan closed his eyes and indulged in his own basking, wrapped in warmth, parasoled by smattering shade. A straw touched his bottom lip. He dutifully drank.

"Mmm... Pineapple. Orange. And... starfruit?" he ventured, rolling the tart aftertaste about on his tongue. "Delicious. But if you've been dipping into the royal gardens again for ingredients, I'll have your heads."

Mona's bright giggle bubbled from his left. "No, my leech!"

" _Liege,_ " corrected Laya, not for the first time that afternoon. Her palm frond fanned faster over Vaan's face as though airing annoyance for the constant blunder. "I told you: a leech is a blood-sucking slug. Ignore my sister, my _liege_. She hasn't even learned all her letters."

"Hey!" The straw slipped from Vaan's mouth as the youngest child flustered. "I do _too_ know my letters! A, B, C, D, E..."

Vaan cracked an eye open and patted her little fist before she could launch into full recital. "It's alright. I believe you, Miss Mona."

"... Elemeno pee— Oh, okay. Good!" The straw returned to poke at the corner of Vaan's mouth while she coordinated a clumsy half-curtsey. "My liege," she enunciated, slow and careful, "I shan't say it the wrong way again. Please don't throw me into the dungeon."

At Vaan's other side, Niles wiggled and giggled over a bowl of toasted nuts. "The dungeon! To the dungeon!" he enthused, rattling shells. Then, struck by serious contemplation, "Does the Royal Palace _actually_ have a dungeon, uncle?"

Vaan accepted a hand-fed pistachio and shut his eyes again, scratching a spot on his belly. "Mmhm, does it ever! Does it ever, kid. It's so big that they couldn't even fit it under the palace. Would've taken up all the waterways. They keep it out of the way, near Nalbina. Queens and kings wouldn't want to sleep on top of a dungeon anyway, or they'd be kept up at night from the screaming." 

The three children were silent. Vaan peeked at their entirely entranced faces. His voice became a dramatic whisper. "Picture this: a great pit of a prison in unplotted desert. There's troughs with no food. A well with no water. Those who don't starve or thirst to death are tossed in a fighting arena to brawl to their ends. Only the truly cunning can sneak around the guards, pass an unpickable door, and reach the prison repository of…" He stopped, mouth and heart both caught on abrupt stutters. "That is. Uh. Reach the room with all their stuff in it." Vaan cleared his throat, chased the echo in his head with a gulp of cold juice. "Yeah. Just. A terrible place to waste away. There's no escape for anyone. Except…" He gave a theatrical pause and gazed around at them. "Except for me."

On cue, the children _ooohed._ Even Laya looked impressed despite being nearly at the age of perpetual disinterest. The frond slowed to a limp wave. Her head tilted in wonder, pale plaits bobbing. "All by yourself? Was ma with you?"

Vaan smirked. "Oh, your ma was off on her own madcap adventure when I was wrestling through the dungeon arena. You'll have to ask her yourself about that one. But..." He traced a jute cord at the hammock's edge, picked at a fray. "I had a bit of help. I made some friends."

On the other end of the garden, the deck door opened. A blonde head with two high braided buns appeared in the doorway. Penelo, summoned by her mention, stepped into the sunlight.

"Laya, Niles, Mona! Miss Iris is here! What are you three still doing in the yard?"

A chorus of _'ma!'_ rang out. Vaan rescued the cup from Mona's slipping fingers before the girl sprinted to Penelo's skirted legs. He raised a guilty hand at Penelo's questioning look. "My bad. Lost track of the time. We were just playing…" He made a vague gesture at the props. "Lords and Ladies."

"Prince and Peasants," said Laya, ever precise. The palm leaf dropped to Vaan's chest as she linked hands with her younger brother and led him towards the house. "My liege, we must take our leave now."

Vaan grinned and waved at them from his hammock. Penelo ushered her children inside with gentle orders of _be good_ and _study well._ She closed the door on the patter of their feet, lingering briefly at the open window before taking the pebbled path to the twin acacia.

"You okay?" he asked quietly as Penelo settled into a vacated rattan chair. This close, Vaan could see the fresh streaks of red in her eyes, the puff of her lids.

She hummed, the note quavering. A finger dabbed at an eye corner, swiped once under her nose. "I'm just… It's just awful, you know? I miss her. I've missed _them_. But not like this. Knowing everything now, it hurts. I miss her so much." A folded handkerchief emerged from the pocket of her dress. She blew her nose. "Thanks for watching the kids after their naps while I… you know."

"Yeah. I know." Vaan reached over and found one of her slim hands. He squeezed it, rubbing a thumb across pale knuckles. "I get it. Whatever you need."

She nodded, then remained silent. A warm gust spilled over the yard's tall sandstone walls, eddied dust down the stone path. A pair of mating wrens sang a lively duet somewhere above their heads, amidst wind-rippled leaves. Moments later, the birds dived, one after the other, to the cactus bed, crowning two arms of a spiny cholla. Their heads twisted to and fro in curious study of the cactites napping still in the hot sun. 

Vaan held on to Penelo's hand and watched the wrens flit and dance, perch to perch. Penelo, soothed, began watching him; her familiar gaze pinned in his periphery. 

An engine droned from a distance, overtaking the cicadas. The early afternoon light dimmed around them. Past their circle of dappled shade, the sunlit ground darkened to equal shadow. By and by, the world lit up again, bright as before. Vaan squinted up past the flickering canopy. A large merchant ship had transited the sun. 

He sighed and shut his eyes. "You can ask about the thing. If you want."

Penelo said nothing at first. The hand in his shifted, slowly cupped around his fingers. His own knuckles took their turn being stroked. She hummed again, a soft buzz of concern.

"What now, Vaan? Are you going to see him again?"

"Not sure if I have a choice. I think he'll be… unavoidable."

"You don't have to put up with anyone you don't want to. You owe Balthier nothing."

He felt himself smiling. "You sound angry."

"Aren't you?" Slender fingers grasped his tighter. "I'm serious, Vaan. It's been so long. Why did he even leave? And he needs a co-pilot _now?_ It's clearly just an excuse to be completely selfish and do what he pleases without a care to anyone else. He doesn't deserve you! As his pilot or as his… _anything._ It's all chocobo droppings."

He laughed, unable to help himself. "Oh, Pen. I love you, really. So much. Don't worry — I agree with everything. I was angry, too. I mean…" He glanced at her withdrawing hand, at her unamused frown. "I still am, of course. I'm not going to upend my life to be his crew, follow his whims. Hells, no! But he'll probably come after me again before long. I don't think I left him with an answer that would satisfy his resolve."

The frown didn't lessen. Penelo scraped her chair closer, her eyes sharp.

"What kind of answer _did_ you leave him? You did say no, right?"

"Yeah, I… I'm sure I did. Okay, maybe not exactly the word 'no,' straight up, in that exact context, but—"

She groaned. _"Vaan."_

"I'm sure he gets it. Actions speak louder and all that." He swallowed, revisiting the memory from only five days prior, of Balthier beneath him, his naked cock hot in Vaan's fist. Penelo didn't need to know about the handjob. But maybe, possibly, it couldn't really be called a handjob (could it?) if Vaan had aborted from it, intending to punish, if the other person never did finish…

"As long as you didn't…" Her mouth contorted. "Sleep with him, or something."

"I didn't sleep with him."

There was a pause, and then the look she shot him was of wide-eyed dismay. "You— You know what? I don't want to know the details of it. So what then, when he finds you next time? You'll swat at him again like he's but a child reaching for the cakes? He'll only take it as a game and keep coming back. Especially if he's already had a crumb."

Vaan didn't doubt her experience in the matter. He shrugged. "'m still trying to figure that out," he muttered. "Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll leave me alone? Fuck. He never should've showed up."

Penelo huffed, tapped slippered toes in the grass. Vaan made a note to keep swearing family-friendly at her address. The conversation lulled like the becalmed air. At the cactus bed, Kip and Pip woke and began squeaking in earnest. Small, boneless arms flailed as the wrens picked at their heads. Penelo jumped up in their defense, shouting _shoos_ and _go_ _aways,_ proving herself more prickly than her wards.

It was many minutes later that the cactites were sufficiently settled, fed, and watered. Vaan stored away the spouted can. Penelo scrapped unfinished aloe morsels into the soil of a planter. He saw her idle there, her fingers curled over the pot's clay crest.

"I almost forgot," she began, far too nonchalant to have almost forgotten anything. "Ralik's asked about you a few times while you were away. Asked if we've heard from you. He misses you, I think."

"Mmm. Yeah?" Vaan turned away and crouched, pretending to follow Pip's waddle around the forest of cacti. "I'll pay him a visit before I go."

Her stare burned more strongly than the summer sun on the back of his head. "Okay. Great. That's a great idea. Hey, if you're ever willing to give it a proper chance, I've always thought — well, both Odis and I, to be honest — we think that Ralik could be good for you." 

_Better for you_. The implication rang clear as crystal.

Vaan didn't move. Didn't trust himself to reply to the suggestion. What could he say? What she wanted to hear would not be true. What he wanted to be true could never be said. Not even in private, in secret, to himself. 

The heavy thud of his heart deafened. Ached. Crowded up all the space in the cage of his ribs. Frozen in his limbo, he didn't know when exactly Penelo's arms folded winglike around his collar and her face touched the top of his head, the chant of her voice a distant cathedral bell tolling — _oh Vaan oh Vaan my dear you really do have it bad don't you._

— 

Halcyon Ceramics closed at six on Fridays. Vaan took a moogling service to Rabanastre’s East End at half past five. 

By late afternoon, the main thoroughfare was draped in slanted shade and busied with people who had waited out the sun. Only the most fastidious sightseers still sheltered under wide brims. Vaan was beyond the embarrassment of being an exception. Avoidance necessitated cover. Since last week, Balthier appeared everywhere, at random, as every slim man with a shock of brown hair — an altogether too common profile — until incongruous faces turned around enough for Vaan to breathe again. 

But the silhouette that stopped him outside the ceramics shop was not Balthier's. A viera exited the arms shop next door. 

The sight of her struck him like reverse. He was seventeen again, and Fran walked Rabanastre as though her royal sentinel. The viera’s dark skin was filigreed from head to clawed toe in gleaming steel. Cloud-white curls cascaded from her helm to skim the crossbow on her back. At Vaan's open stare, she glanced his way. _Not Fran after all. Remember, Fran is dead._ The doppelganger's face, however beautiful, was not a match for the one he had known. Still, her gaze glinted with recognition; she smiled ever so slight, nodded once. Not-Fran turned and was gone. The mill of shoppers swallowed all of her but her spotted ears.

A seeq balancing boxed pottery teetered past him. Vaan automated a _sorry_ and a step back. He looked again. The viera's receding buoy riddled; he had half a mind to run after her, to question (to be sure, just in case). 

_Fran's kin from Eruyt?_ He didn't think himself notable to them fifteen years ago, a desert streetrat in their green sanctum. _Clan Centurio, then?_ And Vaan remembered: his commissioned likeness hung next to Penelo's at Clan Hall, a parody of a hunt bill, lauding his shared record for the year 710.

The viera's ears vanished around a corner. Vaan thought to her a wistful _goodbye_.

He moved forward and pushed ajar the store door.

Ralik was there alone, sunbeamed in the middle of the open workshop, sweeping the floor. His broad back was to Vaan, but the door's open and close turned his head, sent slow-drifting motes aflurry around him. The broom dropped, propping against a pottery wheel table. Large hands wiped across a well-worn apron, tucked into pockets smudged with colour. He smiled.

"Hey. Welcome back."

Vaan's feet drifted him to the tall, handsome potter. _Ralik could be good for you._ In that instant, Vaan felt like an idiot. Trust Penelo to be right about everything. How could he have doubted that Ralik could be less than _good?_

Three months had not at all changed him. While Vaan had spent the time pathing constellations on a map of Ivalice, Ralik was perpetual Polaris, exactly as Vaan left him. His arms were the same adobe brown sculpt, his clothes the same clay-dusted cotton. His trimmed, sandy beard was neither shorter nor longer than before. Even his shop smelled the same, fumed with burnt earth and a linger of his enduring obsession — spiced dark roast coffee.

Vaan stopped when Ralik was close enough to touch. Before he could reply, Ralik reached over, lifted the hat off Vaan's head, spun it once in his hand.

"Is this Penelo's?" Ralik asked with a chuckle. "It is! I remember." The sunhat flipped upside down. He read the blocky inscription embroidered under its brim. " _World's Bestest Ma._ Mona decorated it for her birthday. Did you lose a wager to the kidlings today?"

"Sort of, yeah," Vaan evaded, offering a sheepish smile. "Hey. Long time no see. You're looking… well."

Bright blue eyes glanced up at Vaan's hair. "And you're looking a little matted down." The hat flopped to a workstool. A warm palm found the nape of Vaan's neck. Ralik kneaded into his occiput, teasing his hair upright as fanned fingers tracked upwards to his crown.

Vaan tilted into the touch, and then Ralik's face dipped in, his lips a light press over Vaan's. When he retreated, Vaan chased, keen, hungry. He planted his hands over Ralik's shoulders to urge him lower, to hold him close as Vaan kissed him. He swept his tongue tip along the soft sulcus of Ralik's lips, corner to corner. Ralik opened for him, and Vaan groaned into the taste — coffee, cloves, cardamom — a decadent concoction he hadn't known he missed.

"Hi. Hey." Ralik nudged Vaan's nose with his own as they both took shallow breaths. "Hey, easy there."

"Hi. Missed this," Vaan mumbled into his lips.

"Yeah, well—" Ralik laughed a bit when Vaan clawed down his chest and scraped through his clothes at the bud of a nipple. "Let me… Why don't I close up the shop before someone walks in."

"Oh. Sorry. No, I'll wait." Vaan took a step back, rubbed the back of his head where Ralik had tousled. "You don't have to close early for me."

Ralik shrugged. "It's almost time anyway. Doubt many people need a last-minute piece on Friday night. Give me a sec."

Vaan watched him walk off, lock and bolt the door, flip around the wood plaque hanging from a window. The word _'Open'_ turned inwards, clattering on dusty glass. Vaan obeyed, smirking. He sat on the edge of a low worktable and spread his legs apart.

Brick-red privacy curtains threw the room into intimate shade. Ralik returned, an eyebrow raised with his grin. 

"You know, I was thinking that we should get dinner first."

Vaan groaned again, this time entirely impatient. "Not hungry. Your shop's closed. I want you to fuck me, right here."

Ralik's eyes were dark, his ringed irises barely visible. A sharp canine dented his bottom lip as he dithered, looking Vaan up and down. Vaan pulled him in by apron pockets until knees bumped the table's edge between his legs. He circled his arms around Ralik's waist and started to undo the apron knot blind.

The sensation of cords unraveling in his fingers tangled through his focus, echoed him to another place — Bhujerba — the Chandra — eleven-zero-four: Balthier on the damask couch, laces loose over his crotch. Was that five days ago? It felt like ten years. It felt like right now. Right now, Vaan wanted everything he had started, everything he had scorned that evening, between Balthier's face in the doorway and his face haloed by sweat-slicked hair. Malice had proved a poor balm for Vaan's ego — so injured it was that recovery began with revenge. He trembled; his malice was spent. The cords dropped, untied. The drape of fabric was thrown aside, and he closed his eyes and fell in, clutching at hips, breathing deep through his nose into a firm chest.

"Fuck me," he said again, quieter — a curse. "Gods, I've missed you. I've missed you so fucking much…"

"Hey… Come up. Vaan, come up…"

A pair of strong arms lifted him to his feet. Held him there, warm and fond. Vaan blinked into the shadow of a neck where an apron string noosed.

Feeling sick in his stomach, he raised a shaky hand and brushed the other man's short, wiry beard, miming an apology that snagged on humiliation.

Vaan decided that Penelo was wrong after all; Ralik wasn't _good_ for him — he was _perfect._ Too much so. The disparity daggered, like karma.

— 

At Ralik's insistence, Vaan chose their spot for dinner. The Sandsea was but a short walk down the street, and Vaan knew that Kytes could guarantee them a table. The cost of convenience was his friend's mouth running a mile a minute as soon as they entered. Hospitality became an afterthought to the young man's need to bring Vaan up to speed — _Do you like the remodel? Did you see the new sign? Clever bit of magick, isn't it? Had a moogle help to make it blink and scroll like that. Tomaj thinks it's tacky, but Balfonheim has made him a crotchety Archadian. He ferries in once a month now, at best, just to rant about franchising strategies and supply chains. The gil-hungry bastard. I mean, happy hour — what a concept! Shocked me, it did, when business has never been better. The house ale is half off til the end of the hour. Can I start you with that?_

Ralik, ever good-natured, ordered their food and drinks while Vaan scowled at Kytes's pointed looks between the two of them. The first flagon arrived with bowls of almonds and popped corn on the house and, for some reason, a stubby candle in a pink glass hurricane that Kytes set at the centre of their table. Vaan was sure he had never seen such a kitschy thing in the Sandsea in his life. To the tavern's credit, transferred management did not diminish its offerings. The fried cockatrice wings were perfectly crisp, the hoppy ales rich with foam. Kytes had the tact to leave them mostly alone, busy as he was with the filling floor.

Still subdued with embarrassment from earlier, Vaan let Ralik do most of the talking as they ate. Ralik had a good voice, an ardent baritone that rumbled when he laughed. He made no mention of Vaan's misfired confession — gods be blessed. Instead, Ralik shared stories from during Vaan's absence: a prestigious gallery invitation, an anonymous order for a purple-glazed phallus, his thriving group class on Wednesday mornings, and a project to refashion his workshop to accommodate all races after his most dedicated bangaa student sat hunched on the floor to fit himself around pottery tables. 

There was a casual pressure at his ankle. Vaan shifted away without thinking. The weight followed, affirmed itself beside his sandaled foot. Ralik gave him a small smile across the table.

"You've been rather quiet. A gil for your thoughts?"

For all of Ralik's stories, Vaan realized he had offered none in return. The depleted flame inside the hurricane flickered, clinging to its burnt wick to stay afloat a recess of wax. He felt faded and worn, all at once. _This is not going to work out._

"Ralik…" The word cracked. Vaan coughed drily, took a generous swig. "If this is a date, then I'm really sorry for being an awful companion."

Ralik laughed, looking surprised and a bit shy as he scratched at the hair above his lip. "Well, if it's not a date, then a friend wouldn't fault you for preferring to listen."

Vaan shook his head, banishing undue kindness. "No, I'm really sorry. I'm a mess. Gods, I've led you on for years, haven't I? You've been so good to me. I don't think I can—"

"Vaan. Please, _stop_." A shoe stepped on his forefoot. Ralik leaned forward over the table, candlelight catching in each eye. "I never did anything with you that I didn't want. And I knew you were the same. We've established it quite a few times, I remember. Now, I know we've never talked about being serious or anything, but…" The shoe relaxed, became a gentle prop. "We could start now? Start talking about it, I mean. Not necessarily tonight, not when you've just gotten back — there's a lot to catch up on, to work out, and you look beat. But even after seeing other people here and there, I still like you. Always have. If you feel something similar, maybe we can try at a relationship when you want. When I want. When we're ready." 

Stunned, Vaan nodded mutely at the logic. It all sounded so _reasonable,_ so free of expectation. Ralik said something else that was drowned out by an uproarious debate two tables over. A large hand covered Vaan's briefly, and then Ralik stood up to seek out Kytes at the bar. Vaan watched him settle their tab, exchange a few words that had Kytes looking over and waving, and then Ralik was back at his side, an upturned palm hovering near his elbow.

Vaan took his hand and together they left the tavern. Night had come and cooled the city. Between darkened storefronts, the East End's popular eateries and watering holes were bright oases of laughter and chatter. The hubbub played bass to a cadent tambourine and oud, their duet dancing from an unseen, open window. Under the Sandsea's phasic orange glow, Vaan leaned his head into the space between Ralik's ear and shoulder and squeezed his hand, tentative but grateful.

"Thanks, Ralik. I'll walk you back to your place."

The hand squeezed back. Vaan closed his eyes to a beard tickling across his eyelids. A faint kiss brushed his brow. "I asked you out for dinner. I'll walk you to yours."

Vaan punched Ralik's chest lightly and scoffed. "No need to take up chivalry with me. I don't want it or need it. You're just down the street. I'm by Eastgate. I can just moogle after."

"In that case, can I interest you in a stroll? To, hm… maybe Eastgate? Decent views. Easy distance. As long as you're not rushing to end the date already."

"I thought you said that this isn't a date," Vaan said, smiling into a warm neck.

"I never said that," Ralik admonished. "But we can call it a friendly stroll if it gets me a bit more time with you."

"Uh huh. Friendly stroll, my ass," said Vaan. He took a few steps in the opposite direction of Ralik's shop, pulling at his arm. "All right, you win again. Let's go."

The evening's unexpected turn (the _date,_ as it happened) was admittedly nice. Romantic. Like something out of an old, seaglass memory of Penelo and Odis on an empty Phon beach, two linked blots tracing the rolling cusp of tides. Vaan remembered how that glimpse of them had panged sharp at his own loneliness, even while he and Ralik wrangled the children, keeping the older two from the fire pit while Mona, too little to balance on the soft sand, shrieked with delight from the sling across his back. Romance had been lost to him and Ralik then, that first time. There had been no hand holding. No evening walks. Vaan had abandoned his room for Ralik's after every light went out in the seaside inn, and they had about as much sex as sleep until daybreak. On and off, no strings attached — their tenet for years.

Did he dare imagine something more? Something lasting and happy, like the lovers on the beach? With Ralik, who was thoughtful, beautiful, constant, and so unlike— 

They were midpoint to his residence when Vaan stumbled on his own feet, struck with two revelations: Penelo's hat was still at Halcyon Ceramics, and Balthier had not crossed his mind since dinner. And that was when Vaan made up his mind.

"I've thought about it, you know. About what you said at the Sandsea," Vaan said when they were in the courtyard at the foot of his building. Their hands were still joined. Vaan hadn't let go since the tavern. He brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes and then looked at Ralik's face straight on. "I'm ready, if you are too."

Ralik looked pleased. His hand disengaged and was soon joined by another to fully cup Vaan's jaw. The kiss was tender. Vaan smiled into it, wrapped his arms around Ralik to hold him firm. 

"Fair warning," he whispered, after the other man moved to steeple them forehead to forehead. "I've never been in a proper relationship before." He breathed a laugh. _Relationship._ What a word to say. "Thirty-two and not even… Stupid, huh? I'm a mess, I tell you. I'll probably be ass at it. Not in the sexy way—"

Ralik simply kissed him again, a _thank you_ rumbling through his chest. Behind his broad shoulder, the building's stucco strata loomed to the sky like a glaring question.

Vaan didn't know what should happen next, if sleeping together would spoil the entire point of this thing between them. This _dating._ Blushing young couples didn't date like this, so intimate with each other's bodies for years. At what point did protocol cease to matter? He wanted Ralik here. The idea of going up alone, returning after months to the spartan flat, having the evening undone by an inevitable seep of Balthier into his sleeplessness… Vaan winced at the prospect. Not again. Not tonight.

Vaan clutched the border of Ralik's shoulder blades, pressed closer, his groin flat against a muscled thigh. "Come up," he said. "Stay over."

"I don't think…" The look was back — the one Ralik wore in the darkened workshop, when Vaan had spread open his legs. Again, Ralik bit his lip, all reluctance and nervous energy. "We shouldn't yet…"

 _No, no, no, no._ Vaan took a deep breath, forcing his voice calm. "We _should._ I want you." _I need this._

Vaan felt the moment Ralik tipped towards acquiescence; the palm on his back stiffened, fitted them together. Vaan heard a hushed _alright, okay,_ and then they were a push-pull stagger into the building, Vaan on his toes kissing Ralik hot and hasty up the lifts.

They were just past the threshold, the stale stifle of the long-vacant flat scarcely in their throats, when Vaan shucked off his sandals and began to strip, puddling clothes on the white tile. He tugged Ralik (so _heavy,_ so _slow)_ to his bedroom. They knocked into a dresser, swerved, collapsed. Two clumsy imprints on a vast, pristine bed. 

Vaan climbed him, settled around his lap _(c'mon, off… why are you still wearing this…)_ and traced the head of his cock along the inner groove of Ralik's thigh, up through the pale curls to align them together. 

"Please, I like it when you…" Vaan began, encircling their shafts with his fingers. His words became a hiss. He stroked around the snug cluster of them, but Ralik could do it even better, Vaan knew, with skilled hands made so clever by decades of his art. Those hands lay on the bed, at his sides, clawing into crisp sheets that had been smoothed and tucked so tight that the fabric hardly creased at the pressure. Vaan reached for one hand, found it too rigidly flexed to move.

"Ralik, why are you—"

The other man surged up, a brusque force that turned them, inverting their bodies. Vaan grunted as his back smacked the cool bed. His cock was a craning jut against Ralik's belly, and he anticipated a deft fist to shape them together again. None came. Vaan keened and touched himself, drawing his knees up and apart, shamelessly open, expectant.

White. The ceiling was white as well, Vaan noted, falling still. Like everything else in the flat. Every floor, wall, bed — white on white on white. At night, the white pretended at black, was betrayed by the city below that shot its glow through the naked windows. 

The heavy, shadowed body above him heaved, breathed breaking waves in his ear. Vaan closed his eyes. They were seaside at Phon Coast again, back where they had started, but this time was worse. Ralik had yet to touch him.

"I… I'm so sorry," Vaan whispered. "Ralik, I fucked up…"

Ralik rolled off him. His cock was flaccid between his legs. He was shaking his head, rubbing across his eyes with both hands. "Oh, Vaan," he said, like a laugh. Like they were cast to a comedy instead of a tragedy. "Oh hells, Vaan. Don't blame yourself. It's me."

—

Midnight tolled as a _pop-pop-pop!_ of fireworks bursting from the top of another skyscraper. Vaan pictured inside that lateral penthouse a high-profile birthday party with prim nobles, a live band, and thin flutes of wine with bubbles in it. Or maybe it was a marriage anniversary vaunting twenty, forty, sixty years. Or, if the gods dealt fortune and misfortune in equal measure, maybe a lucky pair had just sealed their engagement — the successful result of hand-holding, long walks, and fantastic sex.

"Cheers," he toasted Ralik. 

They raised their glasses to each other from neighbouring loungers. Vaan sipped, considered spitting into the potted palm. Tepid water from the tap. Returning to Rabanastre only that morning meant that Vaan had nothing stocked.

The geyser of rainbow lights sputtered to nothing some minutes later. Only the moon and stars spotted the sky. Ralik shifted, his teak chair creaking. He put down his half glass of water on the terrace floor.

"My mother thinks there's still a chance for grandchildren from me, you know," he said, a bitter edge to his humour. "As though the three from my brother are not enough when they pile on top of you all at once."

Vaan smiled, remembering many such pilings. "I can put your mother in touch with Pen instead, if you like."

Ralik chuckled, then breathed a long sigh. "She knows I don't care for women. Yet she still hopes. Insinuates, when I visit. In the middle of dinner. Like a harmless thing about how the sandstorms are a bane on her pepper plants or how the Queen must be a harlot judging by a new gala dress. Except, in this case, it's how she'll be so disappointed to go without first meeting my children. Children who don't and _won't_ exist. So, then… Hells, imagine her reaction if I tell her that I…" he trailed off, knuckles to his lips.

Vaan sat up, swinging his legs off the chair's side to face Ralik. Words between them flowed clear and easy now after hours of penitent confession, but the gulf widened in other ways. Vaan forbore bridging to him with touch. Ralik steadied himself, his hand unclenching to busy at the hem of his shirt.

"Being Dalmascan never eroded my mother's racism," he stated grimly. "Hers runs as deep as your worst Archadian bigot's. She actually… She's been to my class twice, you know. Spun pottery across the table from him. Avoided him, like she would vermin. But, still, clueless each time. Nobody suspects or speculates when it's not another hume but a bangaa."

"At the tavern, you went on about him for the longest time. I didn't even think twice…"

"That fault was mine. I could have said something and I didn't. I chose to force something that seemed easier. More… normal. I sought acceptance, but from the wrong people."

"Do you love him?"

"Yeah," Ralik said, the honesty soft and sad in his voice. "I do. And I think he ought to know." He sat up, his body a mirror to Vaan's, their toes meeting in the middle on the straw mat. "What about you, hmm? You don't have all the world's prejudice to war against. What's keeping you, Vaan?"

 _Nothing. Everything._ Vaan didn't reply and Ralik didn't press. They stayed on the terrace, talking (and not), until Vaan's head was laden with exhaustion, and after a long, slow blink, the sun was burning red through his eyelids. He woke to the wind in his hair and a warm blanket cocooned around him on the lounger. Ralik was gone.

It didn't feel like loss, he reflected as he cleaned their cups at the kitchen sink, the blanket still caped around his shoulders. Not this time. This was different. The spot in his heart where only Penelo inhabited for so long had made room for one more.

—

Balthier kept away for all of fourteen days before his reappearance. Longer than Vaan's initial expectation by a week. Shorter than his last major absence by an tolerable margin.

Vaan should have noted the shift in the atmosphere the moment his client struck short her sentence. He was tired, concentration lacking, body aching everywhere below the neck. The moogle's wares were glass-bottled curatives and health tonics in unforgiving bulk. Their completed load up the ramp to the cargo hold had Vaan only half listening to her rehearsed pitch, and her paw going _tap-tap_ over his tall boots registered only after Balthier had already spoken.

"Ah! I thought I recognized your ship, Vaan. What luck! I need a lift. I've crashed my hover."

A discord of exclamations, curses, questions jumbled through his mind. His parched mouth managed only to eke out the one: "Your _what?"_

"My hover. My hoverbike!" lamented Balthier, hands aquiver in the air, as though being forced to state the obvious piqued his agitation tenfold. "I've crashed it and I can't fix it. Well, I suppose I can, in theory. But as it stands, quad-pronged magicite capacitors are in short supply in the middle of the Nabradian Nowhere. And the onboard emergency toolkit is utterly _abysmal._ What motivates man to reinvent the wrench, I ask! The manufacturer will hear from me when this is over, mark my—"

"Balthier," Vaan interjected. "I'm with a client." Then, to the moogle, "Madam, I'm really sorry about this. We can continue to chat in the air? If you're ready, I'll close the hold and begin pre-flight checks."

"Oh, certainly. Thank you, kupo!" chirped Rime the moogle. (From behind him, an appalled _'Vaan!'_ balked.) The accordian of her Tetran Corp pamphlet folded back into a tiny square for her pocket and she hopped up the loading ramp, plum pompom swinging. "I'll go get seated now. Your friend looks very upset. I hope you can help him, kupo!"

The stomp of feet on gravel trailed after Vaan in a warpath around the _Esterwind._ Vaan examined each external hatch and latch while Balthier blathered behind him: _… need to get on your ship. You can't just leave me stranded here! Vaan, are you even listening—_

"The town's that way," Vaan said, pointing down the path that had been tracked by Rime's rolling pallet of crates. Low houses and striated fields marked the small Nabradian farming settlement. "Go get help there."

"I've _already seen_ the sorry excuse for a town," Balthier seethed. "It took but a minute. Not a single mechanic or chocobo rental. Everyone only insists on peddling the same accursed lavender tincture — _to calm your nerves._ Gods! How does one even live here? And yours is the only airship I've seen all day. I'll _hire_ you for passage. That's what you do now, isn't it?"

Back at the base of the ramp, Vaan paused. "It's none of your business what I do."

"It took me no great pains to find out, I assure you. I followed your advice and paid a visit to the Cloudborne. Your little advertisement for shuttle services was posted quite prominently." Balthier's hand dug into a vest pocket, drew out a crumpled page. "Ah, not this one…" He rummaged again, took out a second wad, but Vaan was already snatching up the first to shake it open.

"You… stole the official records? From the aerodrome desk?"

Balthier gave him a stiff look, nose twitching once. His hair was tied up today, Vaan noticed. A blunt, paintbrush tail that gathered most of the strands out of his dirt-smeared face. His hair was too short to all share one tie; the rest of it was a frazzle around his ears. At Vaan's continued stare, Balthier broke the gaze and crossed his arms.

"Certain coded messages begged translation. Fortunately, your other recommendation proved even more helpful. Never would I have known otherwise that a Rabanastre whore has more than one use for his mouth."

 _Bastard._ Vaan wanted to laugh at the cruel irony of them — their mish-mash mesh of a non-relationship that ran both contrary and in parallel, so dissimilar and yet the same, in flux at each cross of paths. He wanted to slap back: _did you hire the stocky one with the neck tattoo? Or was it the prettier one who looks more like me? How would his mouth compare to mine when I’ve been sucking on another man’s tongue since the last time we met?_

The creased page pushed into Balthier’s chest. Vaan turned to hike the ramp. "I'm on a schedule. Bye."

“But… ! Vaan, you _can’t—”_

The hatch closed with a brassy grate of metal on metal. Vaan entered the cockpit, checked on his passenger, and then the _Esterwind's_ glossair rings spun to life — no doubt hurling more grime at the man caught in its draft. The ship juddered, became aloft. What sounded like a heavy boot hit the outside of the hull. 

"Oh dear," said Rime from her seat behind him. "Is that your upset friend? He would surely benefit from a _Lavender Mists_ relaxation tonic from Tetran Corp, kupo!"

The flight to New Nabudis had Vaan's attention occupied by the moogle's enterprising chatter as she attempted (unsuccessfully) to engage him in _'an exciting and exclusive business opportunity, kupo!'_ After she disembarked with her cargo, Vaan was left with a heavier purse and an empty ship. 

He paid for an extra three hours' docking at the aerodrome and entered the city.

Had he been younger, Vaan would have whiled away the evening in the jewel-bright flytrap of Empyrean Street, halved his earnings on good food and good company, returning to the hangar only after daylight dispersed the night's influences to permit new clients and flight paths. Instead, three hours was an overestimation to run his few errands. Was it a testament to age that made him mundane, want less? Or had something changed in the world around him, like arabesque carved on stone, to bring relief to what was once bare? 

His feet wandered him to an open market on a quieter end of the city. Here, the rebirth of Nabudis took its time. Local farmers and craftsmen rolled out carpets to display wares, making their living in increments of an ear of corn, a polished bead of amber. Vaan ambled canvas-tented aisles collecting items for a changeable checklist — non-perishables, ship sundries, small presents. A garden mandragora embedded with earth magicite (Penelo). Nabradian nougat candies wrapped in colourful paper (the children). Mosphoran-grown coffee beans roasted midnight-black (Ralik).

He made one last detour on the walk back to the aerodrome. By the end, his purse was a rattle of scant coins, far more than the day's profits spent.

Vaan returned to the skies above the rural farming settlement before sunset.

It was easy to spot the crash site when he knew to look for it. A dark stain ribboned through a grassy hillock west of the village. At its end, a jagged clump, half hidden by a tree. 

The _Esterwind_ landed on the open hill top. The loading ramp lowered to reveal Balthier coming up the slope to meet him.

"I thought…" Balthier started, looking caught between perplexity and profound relief. "I thought you'd left."

 _I came back. As you did._ Vaan unslung the burlap bag from his back, extended it to Balthier. "Let's see the hoverbike."

Balthier tugged open the drawstrings. He reached in, withdrew from the clatter of assorted tools an old wrench and a crystal-cased component that fit into the tremulous curve of his palm.

"You—! This is the magicite capacitor."

"Four prongs, right?" Vaan descended the hill and called over his shoulder, "If I find out you lied about that, I'll shove the whole thing up your ass and you can walk to New Nabudis!"

Strange it was, how time passed through them. How it damaged and mended in cyclic vortex, a water clock distilling years, days, minutes — to freefall, meaningless out the other end. Vaan didn’t count the time it took to fix the hoverbike. The stars were out and the breeze picked up speed, making waves of the tall grass when they bolted the engine cover closed. Balthier slotted his keystone on the dash. The hover hummed to life. It lifted a foot off the ground from the litter of tools, glossair wheels aglow.

But Balthier wasn’t looking at his hoverbike. Vaan pretended not to notice the other man’s eyes on him as he circled around, bagging the strewn tools. He straightened, threw the sack over his shoulder, ready to go.

Vaan broke the silence first. “It’ll fit, you know.”

Balthier blinked. He looked up, away from the backside of Vaan’s pants. “... What?”

Vaan rolled his eyes, bit back a smile. “Your hoverbike in my cargo hold, idiot.”

“My hoverbike. In your cargo hold,” repeated Balthier, his mind clearly somewhere analogous. “Well!” He stood and brushed dirt from his clothes to little avail. “We’re in business. I’ll just ride up my hoverbike into your cargo hold now, shall I?”

“Don’t push it,” Vaan grumbled. He led the way back to the airship, letting Balthier look if he wanted to.

The hoverbike did indeed fit inside the _Esterwind’s_ cargo hold with room to spare. They strapped and secured it to the hull where the Tetran Corp crates had stacked earlier that day.

“I never thought you the type to fly a hauler,” Balthier commented, peering around the spacious bay, filling it with the tinny reverb of his voice. “It’s very… utilitarian. Quite unlike your first airship, I recall — a bubble of a cockpit with hardly any legroom. A narrow cabin of similar incommode. More flair than function. How well does this one fly at full capacity? Is it of Rozarrian make? I can tell; there’s a ghastly spot of welding there on the ceiling—”

“Balthier. Just…” Vaan looked back at him from the doorway to the main cabin. The smile broke. He gestured once, waving Balthier in. “Just come in. Wouldn’t you rather see it for yourself?”


End file.
